Jerry Brown is Paddling on the Right Side of the Canoe
When he was governor three decades ago, Jerry Brown explained his political philosophy this way: “You paddle a little bit on the left, then you paddle a little bit on the right and you keep going straight down the middle.” As John Wildermuth pointed out here on Fox and Hounds,
Brown is not the first politician to try this system. Bill Clinton and friends called it triangulation. But, Brown’s description is more appealing and it makes it easier to examine what he has been up to lately.
Brown has been paddling hard on the right side of the canoe.
On Wednesday, Brown told LegalNewsline.com that over-regulation and too many laws were hurting California business.
"The whole framework of law is crucial for the operations of business enterprises," Brown said in the interview. "But when over prescriptive, it creates a huge and growing amount of overhead and it does seem that we’re reaching the point of counter-productivity." Brown indicated too many laws make it too easy to sue in California.
Likely Voters Unhappiest with Legislature
Legislators are generally convinced that if people only paid more attention to the work elected officials do in Sacramento, there would be a lot more sympathy for the plight of the poor politician.
But a poll released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California seems to show that the more involved people are in government, the less they like the people making the laws.
Take, for example, the job approval ratings for the state Legislature. When the poll asked a sample of all California adults how the Assembly and state Senate were doing, 18 percent thought they were doing a good job.
Limit that sample to people registered to vote in the state and the approval rate slips to 15 percent. But when only those people who are registered and likely to vote are surveyed, the Legislature’s approval skids to a rock-bottom figure of 10 percent. That’s a record, by the way, but don’t expect to see any celebrations in the Capitol.
Dealing with Gang Violence
A Los Angeles Times article
about the sad and tragic story of the Barajas family living in South L.A., who
have been victims of gang violence in the area on multiple occasions, resonated
with me because it is a story I have heard far too many times. I taught in Gardena, a school at the
very edge of South L.A., equally plagued with this kind of gang violence. I have had several students who lost
parents and siblings because of gang violence.
Every year, the school had to offer grief counseling because
either one of our own students had been shot and killed, or the victim was
someone who was known by a majority of our students. Sometimes victims were gang members; often they were in the
way of a stray bullet. One of my
own students, who in this case was a gang member, was also shot and
killed. Ironically, this happened
the weekend after I kept him after class to talk to him about life choices; how
his choices pointed to death or jail.
The people in this area live with a deep fear and yet an inability to
escape it.
It’s about calories and energy balance
Last week in Los Angeles, I testified before a joint hearing of the California Senate Select Committee on Obesity and Diabetes and the Senate Health Committee. The hearing was convened to explore the alleged link between consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity and diabetes. There were several main points in my testimony:
First, energy balance is of paramount importance. All calories consumed must be balanced by all calories burned through all forms of physical activity in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
Second, data from the USDA show that all calories in the food supply have increased over the last three decades and calories from added fats and oils increased 73 percent compared with a much smaller increase (14 percent) in calories from all added sugars. Furthermore, the data also show that added sugars availability has declined 10 percent in the last decade, yet obesity continued to rise.